Mobile phone-based chemical sensors and biosensors

We used ultra-low-cost paper microfluidic sensors produced by ink jet printing for electrochemiluminescence-based detection for the first time. Significantly, we demonstrated that the luminescent emission could be initiated electrochemically using the audio output of a mobile phone as a function generator;
and simultaneously captured by using the in-built camera as a photodetector.

Such mobile phone based biosensing promises to make environmental testing and medical diagnostics more widely available, especially in resource-poor environments and remote areas.